School and food and spiders

So, this blog post might be a bit long and rambley because I’m about to cram three weeks of culture shock into it. You might be thinking, hey, you’ve been here for six weeks, why would you suddenly be experiencing culture shock now? Well, you see, those first three weeks, although I had a lovely time with my temporary German host family, were mostly spent with AMERICANS. And it may have been a German language camp, but we sure as heck weren’t speaking German. So, yeah. Culture shock.

I have now taken up residence in Vietlubbe, a SMALL town in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It’s really really pretty here; there are these giant windmills about a mile away from my house and I see them every time we go anywhere. And the good weather helps too, although, as of yesterday it has turned not so wonderful.

It was pretty awkward when I first got here; I didn’t understand anything and I could only say a few simple sentences. We kinda just ended up staring at each other and then laughing at how awkward it was. Eventually we just started speaking Denglish (Deutsch-English). The second day we went to the Baltic sea, which was very pretty and nice, even though it started to rain . . . . really hard. But it was still cool to see.

And then . . . . school. It’s really not too bad, mostly because I don’t do anything. Usually I just translate the written stuff they give me because there’s no way I could keep up with what they’re saying – even if I were listening :P The worst part is not being able to understand the people around me because I feel left out and stuff, but I don’t want them to speak English because then I wouldn’t be learning German, but if I don’t understand anything then I can’t say anything and then…..yeah. But there are a lot of really nice people in my school, and I feel like I’ve made a lot of good friends already J

In about five weeks from today, I’m going to have to actually start participating and earning grades in class, which I’m totally dreading, but for now I’m really just coasting through school trying to soak up as much German as I can.

Okay, so, food: Usually in the morning I have a roll with homemade raspberry jelly. Then I make myself I sandwich for in between classes. It’s something that everybody does here that I really like. Everybody just brings a bag load of sandwiches or snacks so they can eat them between classes. It’s awesome. Then I eat a warm lunch in the cafeteria. While not the best food it is TEN times better than cafeteria food in America. The first day I was there someone asked me what they have to eat for lunch in my American school. We have 3 options at Coronado school. Salad, something else, or pizza. The something else changes every day but it’s usually not very good. The salad and pizza however, are there every day, so of course, when (NOT EVERY DAY) I eat from the cafeteria I go for the pizza because the salad is soggy and gross. So when this girl asked me what we have to eat in my American school, I told her pizza. Every day.

Now everybody thinks I eat pizza every day.

So much for erasing stereotypes.

Dinner is really good because my host mom makes it, and even if it’s really simple like potatoes and some meat, it’s always really goodJ Also, the bread here has reached and surpassed all the great expectations I had for it. It’s that good.

I’m going to come home really fat J J J J J

Another thing that I find really funny, is that no one believes me when I say I’m from Las Vegas. They’re like “No! Really?? People actually live there? I thought it was just casinos . . .” It’s really funny, but also kinda sad . . .

Anyways, this week was really exciting because we got two more exchange students!!! One is from France, she’s in most of my classes and she speaks really good German and English so it’s easy to speak Denglish around her J The other exchange student is from Turkey, which I think is really cool because I want to go there some day. She doesn’t speak any German at all! I’m amazed really – even I had a Rosetta Stone and my three week crash course. But, as it seems everyone does in Europe, she speaks English. I feel really lame because everyone here is at least trilingual, and here I am, the American, barely knows any German and only had two years of Spanish, which she’s already completely forgotten. It’s funny, but it’s like the German language is fogging up my brain or something because I seriously don’t remember any Spanish at all and my English is starting to sound like the other German student’s English. It is quite aggravating.

Another aggravating/terrifying thing is the SPIDER issue. Really, this issue could be extended to all insects of various kinds, but the spiders are definitely the most common here. And I mean COMMON. Like EVERYWHERE. And Germans are okay with that. They really don’t care. But me?? Well, as my host mother puts it: I have angst. ANGST!!!! I’ve had at least three spider-filled nightmares, and whenever I enter a room I look up to count how many spiders there are. And trust me – they are always there!!!!! They’re not tiny either. Nuh-uh. These are not Vegas spiders. These are big daddy-long-legs-looking-but-not-actually-daddy-long-legs spiders. And then there’s this other type of spider here that’s pretty common, but I haven’t seen any in the house, THANK GOD, because it’s fat and ugly and it looks like it wants to kill me!!!!!!!!

 Yeah. Angst.